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So. Now that I no longer work for Small Mom and Pop EMS, I thought it’d be nice to share my experiences ie: my last few months there. My supervisor asked me ever so politely to jump on the other side of the radio, temporarily of course, as they had just fired our night dispatcher. Mind you, I didn’t mind the pay cut… I needed a break from the roads and the hour and half commute to my new station.

Thus started my adventure on the other side of the radio. I made a REALLY weird video to go with it. I’ll post it at the end, I suppose if I can find it. I digress. I started dispatching and IMMEDIATELY hated it. There was no honeymoon period, or early marriage stages. I wanted a divorce and quickly. This was like a Britney Spears “oopsy” marriage in Vegas sort of deal. Granted, I was able to go home every night and sleep… and only most nights I had nightmares of post assignments and late doctor’s appointments… the other nights I drank myself into a dreamless slumber. Kidding- I don’t have an alcohol problem, I swear. (Only at EMS Conferences, ok?) Anyways, it was just as frustrating as I imagined it to be.

My main anxiety with dispatching was having to tell my co-workers, some whom I considered friends and others I just respected or at least tolerated, where to go. These places I sent them were never pleasant. Maybe they had to sit and post while a crew made a LD trip 3 hours away. Yay! You get to sit on the side of the road for a while and try to sleep… until I make you run a call 30 miles away because YOU ARE MY ONLY TRUCK. Oh. There is frustration number two. At Mom and Pop Backwoods service, there were only 3 ambulances that ran 24 hours a day. 1 that ON A GOOD DAY ran from 8-5… depending on who was on it and what they felt like doing. (Usually, my supervisor was on it. Though I like him now in retrospect, I couldn’t STAND him sitting at my desk in dispatch and making my decisions for me. Grrr.) Anyways. I’m digressing again. We had 3 full time trucks. To in the main city, and one 15 minutes out in this tiny city that didn’t run that many calls in my day. Granted, this parish has 3 ambulance services in it. The Borg, MedDeath, and Mom and Pop. So you’re thinking- 911 rotation + 3 services= sleep all night? WRONG. MedDeath may have… The Borg can be sent anywhere in the state so most of the times, at least one of their 2 units was out covering a busier parish, like Lafayette or posting somewhere waiting for the deathpatcher dispatcher to send them to their fate. So, that being said, Mom and Pop ran.

So, there I am, answering business calls, routing bill payers and dodgers to the billing department, taking emergency calls, sending ambulances out, writing down call times manually, and calling my units for updates because of course, we didn’t have unit tracking. Oh… and posting my poor crews to sketchy gas stations that were midway, or of course the creepy graveyard. Both were options. I… I am a medic. I didn’t WANT to understand what happened on the other side of the radio. I wanted to be blissfully unaware and just gripe about my assignment to PushEmDown Nursing Home at 3 am for ANOTHER fall. I wanted to believe dispatch was out to make me miserable. I wanted to believe they all had magic 8 balls and were pulling us at random to run crappy calls.

Now? I can’t gripe. Now that I’m at the Borg and things are a bit more complicated than just 3 ambulances in a region per dispatcher… I can’t complain when I get sent to post at the Wallace bridge. I know that the dispatcher, no matter how sinister the reputation may be, is probably struggling for coverage. The last thing he wants to hear is back talk. I remember hearing a unit gripe about post assignment and call me “A Terror.” (Please folks, remember to not sit on your radio!!) When I had an LD that night at 2 am- I had a choice. The crew that brought me lunch… and the crew that called me a Terror. Guess who I sent? Bye Bye, mean crew. YOU are a terror.

So folks, remember… your dispatcher, who may sound like a crazed psychotic lunatic most of the time, is a person just like you. Sometimes they make mistakes. (I’ve pointed that out to Borg management recently. They always say “Dispatch is God.” I always come back with- I was a dispatcher and I know differently!) Sometimes, you are for real the only truck available for post. Sometimes, you’re just up for a call. This is EMS. Eat when you can. Pee… and erm… other things… when you can. By all means, sleep when you can! When your shift is other, bid your dispatcher a good day (or night) and go home and take care of yourself. At the end of the shift, that’s all that matters.

More The Other Side of the Radio rants to come.

Apparently there is some blogging chain going on… and our very own HappyMedic, Justin Schorr, tagged me in his post.

Apparently, HM wants to know what I read in the “office” aka on the Pooper. Here’s the thrilling list:

• Breaking Dawn (yes, the Twilight saga)
• EMS Magazine (the one that Nancy Perry gave me in Los Angeles!)
• Everyone Poops (because my sister has kids and they love this book)
• Brave New World (one of my favorite novels)
• The Last 4 issues of Cosmo (my guilty pleasure)

and of course I have a digital connect four game for when I tire of reading (which is rare).

Now that you know WAY too much about me, I will pry into some others’ lives! I tag thee:

Jeramedic

Greg Friese

CKemtP

EMTGoose

Steve Whitehead

now: time for you guys to tag away and spill the beans!

As of late, I’ve had more and more contact with one of my heroes, Steve Whitehead of The EMT Spot. He’s an amazing supporter of  GenMed and is constantly encouraging all that I do. What he told me and Jeremiah via e-mail rant struck a chord with me.

“You’re not stealing anyone’s thunder. You’re making thunder. I like the
way it sounds.”

For so long I’ve felt like I had to tiptoe my way in with all of these well established professionals. I came on scene just a few months ago with guns blazing, running my Southern mouth as usual. People started noticing, projects started shaping, and I am where I am today. I host a super cool podcast, I write a fun blog, I have a fun time on Twitter… and people listen, read, and watch for some odd reason. Ok, maybe not odd. I am a unique person, I get that… but the fact is, I never felt like I was making great strides until Steve said that to me. A professional whom I look up to so incredibly much *listens* to my show. Not just as background noise, he listened and gave me feedback.

What now? People are listening… I’m not just yelling into an empty room with my co-hosts. People can hear the shouting. They take part in the screaming. Can I live up to their expectations?

Yes. I know I am just this small town girl, but I believe in myself and my colleagues above all things. We can be the change. No, not *be* the change… we ARE the change right now. Not in a year, not in 3 years, not next decade, we are shaping EMS as we speak!

To my young readers: Don’t wait to be involved! Jump in now! This EMS 2.0 movement isn’t just for the generation above us, it’s ours, too. If anything, we should feel the NEED to be a part of it. We aren’t too young for a say in things, we’re still very much a large percentage of the active EMS population. Make thunder, don’t just steal it… because that truly is music to our ears!

Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about a call I ran as a medic student way back when (Ok, it was like 2 and a half years ago) and I thought I would share it with you all. I think this call has made me into the medic I am today.

We were dispatched to a scene of an “altered mental status” patient about 4 minutes from our base, with about a 12 minute transport time to the nearest hospital. In my little medic student mind, I am riding in the back of the rig going over every scenario I can. We have no age on the patient, so I’m thinking diabetes, stroke, head injury, drugs, ETOH, tumors, a flying pink unicorn up his nose etc etc. I was young as was thinking through all of my horses and my zebras. As we roll up on scene, my preceptor Jay sighed and I raised my brows quizzically at him.

“Known drug corner, kiddo. Grab some narcan and the monitor.”

I wasn’t in the “2080′s” of our clinicals yet- which is where your preceptor cuts you loose with the EMT-B and says, “go save lives, kid. I’ll tell you if you’re killing them,” but I was still confident enough to take reigns on this case. I precepted in an area with a high violence and drug rate, which prepared me for my future at my current company which has an even HIGHER violence and drug rate.

So, I’m walking on scene along with PD and I don’t see a patient “outside on ground, not moving” like dispatch had radioed in. I’m looking around the scene, I notice we are about 3 blocks south of my best friend’s house, so I know the area pretty well. I was with about 3 huge male local police officers, and my crew for the day, 2 huge men. The police officers know the man whom the call was placed for, he was a known dealer and user. We see this blur tear around the corner, and the police yell, “That’s him!” It all happened so fast. He was running towards us, and everyone was backing off. I noticed a large laceration to his forearm and he was swinging the injury around wildly. He turned around and ran in the other direction.

We kind of jogged about 1 block north and I could see my best friend’s house from where we were. (Mind, in the South, our blocks are not as big as they are in cities.) For some reason, the safety of my friend rushed to mind. As he jogged closer and closer to her house, I started getting sicker and sicker. I knew that her young sister was home alone and that their house had been before broken into. It was right on the edge of the “bad part” of town, so it was just nice enough to be targets of things like this. Without thinking, I made my way closer to her house versus the patient. WHY I was in pursuit with the officers, I don’t quite know. But he was my patient and I wanted him secure and safe in the rig. Well, he sees my sudden move to her side of the street and runs at me. This man is about 6 foot 4 and must weight upwards to around 300 lbs. I am 5 foot 2 and I can hold my own, but I’m no house. He ran at me hard and fast. The adrenaline takes over and when I realize what I’ve done, I am shocked. I tackled him to the ground. With all of these big, huge men watching, I took him down.

My preceptor chuckled as we struggled to get him on the stretcher. He had taken PCP and had sliced his forearm with a butcher knife. He was handcuffed to the stretcher and was bending the bars that held him there. The officers all clapped as I helped lift him into the truck.

Now here is where I was schooled.

Only one of his arms was handcuffed. I needed to dress his wound and start a line on him. Jay took vitals and ran an EKG while Jake prepped the IV line for me. We had requested PD to stay and ride with us since it would only be me and the aging Jay in the back of the unit, but they were short staffed and said, “She tackled him outright. He gets out of hand again, she knows what to do.” We all laughed. Looking back now, I should have begged them to stay.

Jay was printing out the EKG, SVT in the 180′s, when it happened. As I was opening the catheter to the 16 gauge needle I had in my hands, this patient took it from me with his uncuffed hand and stabbed me several times before we could stop him.

That needle hadn’t touched his arm, thank God. That was all I could keep saying over and over again.

He managed to stab me 6 times, once in the AC. It wasn’t that deep but that one required pressure on the way to the hospital. Jay and I literally had to sit on this man to keep him restrained during transport. En route, he even bit through the left lead on his chest. I don’t know if you’d ever want to put those things in your mouth after all of the gunk they go through, but next time you do an EKG, try to bend that lead in half (but not really, your boss may get upset) and imagine biting through that tough wire! It was pure craziness!

We got to the hospital and this patient had no IV, had ripped off his dressing, the report was “vague” and the vitals weren’t too current. But they all looked at me differently that day. Because as I was leaving the curtain I was in getting bandaged up and taking the necessary shots, I went to his room and wished him good luck. I told him that I hoped he would feel better soon and that there were no hard feelings on my part, the drugs had made him do it. His answer was to spit at me, because now the cops had charged him with assault on top of drug charges and evasion.

I apologized to the ER doc for not having everything current on him, especially not trying to get his heart rate down in the field.

He smiled and said, “MsP, you did better than most veterans would do on that call. You stayed calm.”

But I looked at Jay and hung my head. I felt like I had failed. The very first thing that you learn as an EMT and a Medic is “scene safety.” I had none on that call. I felt safe with PD there, I had chased after a known drug dealer who could have been armed. I stepped out of my “scope” and forcefully taken down a patient. I lost control of my scene and became a patient, and I had let my patient damage very expensive equipment on a truck that wasn’t even mine. I heard Jay on the phone with my clinical coordinator and my stomach dropped. I was going to get a fail for this clinical and would have to repeat 2 more shifts to make up for this one… if I was lucky. Maybe I had stepped too far out of line and would be taken out of clinicals. I teared up as I drew closer.

“She’s ok now, she got the necessary shots and she’s bandaged and ready to go. But you shoulda seen her, Sal. She took down that guy so fast we didn’t realize what was happening! And the way she handled him right as we were leaving, I see a lot of potential in this kid. She’s got a lot of heart,” he said, looking up at me and winking. We walked back to the unit and I was being sent home for the rest of the shift with full credit hours for “grace under pressure.” As I closed the back door to the rig, I looked up at the hospital and smiled. I could make it.

By all means, readers… please don’t chase drug dealers, please be safe on scene, and if you aren’t sure that you and your partner can control the scene efficiently, get additional help. But also take from this that even when things go so wrong, you can still be a compassionate caregiver.

Well, I am sitting on my hotel bed, getting ready to go out to dinner with Chris Kaiser, Chris Montera, and their spouses. It has been a long day here in San Francisco. I will catch you up on everything that happened.

So, I flew into SFO yesterday at 10:40am/Pacific time and was picked up by the strapping Jeremiah Bush (who said that chivalry was dead? pshht!) where he drove me to the beautiful Hotel Frank. I quickly freshened up and met with Kaiser, his wife Gina, Greg, and Jer for a quick lunch nearby. We talked about EMS and the changes that we’d like to see, as most conversations tend to steer towards when you’re with this many passionate people! Great food, great conversation, I couldn’t complain! Kaiser and I walked to Kinko’s and printed some business cards for the meet-up and premiere. Then it was time to get all dolled up for the evening!

The time came for the premiere- and I was blown away. Not only by the footage of Chronicles of EMS, but by the networking happening in that room! Everyone was united under the common cause: to change EMS for the better! I stood arm and arm with THE EDITOR of JEMS magazine, A.J. Heightman, and also with fellow medics that I had talked to for months and months online! I must say, meeting Justin and Mark was simply amazing! Also, meeting another young medic that shares a lot of the same ideas as I do was refreshing as well… Mr. Jeramedic took the cake on that one!

All in all, the premiere and the meet up was a success! I went to dinner with Dr. Wesley, Montera, Sam Bradley, Gina and Chris Kaiser, Jeremiah, and Greg- where once again, interesting debates were sparked! Being with all of these people in the same room for once was so incredible! The thoughts and ideas were bouncing off of the walls! Sharing dinner and drinks with that crew was a hoot, for sure.

Then I had the best sleep in my life.

I woke up early a little sad to see some friends leaving the city so soon- but I was off to film “A Seat at the Table” which is another part of Chronicles of EMS. I had the pleasure of doing 2 episodes with Mark, Justin, Sam, Jim, and Kaiser. I was the baby, but I think I held my own. Like I’ve said before, when people THIS passionate about our field get together, the possibilities are truly endless.

Now, I am getting ready to head out to dinner with the group again, for what I’m sure will be another night of great conversation, drinks, and all around good times!

Until next post, lovies!